Fear

“What about Drake?” Orc demanded.

“Orc, you have to carry him. I can’t keep him from bleeding out. We get him back there. Then we go after Drake.”

“It’ll be dark soon.”

“We can’t let him die, Orc.”

Orc stared in the direction Drake had gone. For a moment Dekka wondered if he would go off after him. And a part of her—a part she wasn’t proud of—wished Jack would just die, because he was probably going to anyway and Drake was going to get away.

“I’ll take him,” Orc said. “You go after Drake. Only don’t fight him until I catch up.”

“Believe me, I’ll be happy to wait for reinforcements,” she said. And silently realized that by herself she could not possibly beat Drake.

She began trotting after Drake, his footprints—and two other sets—still barely visible in the fading light.

Sanjit was now part of a growing crowd of frightened, hesitant kids. He fumed at the delay. Nothing was going right. He should have reached the lake by now. And darkness, real, serious, this is it darkness was coming down fast.

The second coyote pack struck without warning after the noisy, disorganized gaggle had turned off the highway and onto the gravel road that led to the lake.

There were hills to the right, and in the distance to the west a dark line of trees that someone told Sanjit was probably the edge of the Stefano Rey National Park.

The two twelve-year-old girls, Keira and Tabitha, and the boy, Mason, were not the immediate targets. Neither was Sanjit. The coyotes came bounding straight down the road as if sent from the lake. Straight down the road, five of them, bypassed a few larger kids, and suddenly converged on a two-year-old girl.

The first Sanjit knew of it were the screams as the coyotes began their rushing attack. He started running. He drew the pistol Lana had given him but there was no way to get a clear shot. Kids in panic were rushing back toward him. Others scattered left and right, screaming, screaming, calling one another’s names.

The lead coyote bit the child’s arm. She cried. The coyote dragged her off her feet and started hauling her off the road. He lost his grip and the child was up and running.

The coyotes, almost casual, formed a semicircle, ready to take her down for good.

“Get out of the way!” Sanjit yelled. “Get out of the way!”

Screams were general now. Dust kicked up. Slanting tea-colored light cast lurid shadows of fleeing children and the yellow canines.

A second coyote grabbed the child by her dress and began hauling her away.

Sanjit fired in the air.

The coyotes flinched. A couple trotted away to a safe distance. The one with the little girl in his teeth did not.

Sanjit was just a few feet away now, could see blood, could see the coyote’s yellow teeth and intelligent eyes.

He aimed the gun from just a few feet and fired.

BAM!

The coyote let go of the girl and ran off. But not far. Not far at all.

Sanjit reached the girl just as her sister did. The girl was bloody but alive. And screaming, everyone screaming and crying. Kids had their cudgels and blades out, too late, bristling with fearful threat.

The coyotes danced eagerly, a pistol shot away. But Sanjit knew he had no chance of hitting one.

“Get moving!” Sanjit yelled harshly. “If we’re still out here, when night comes we’re all dead.”

The group of maybe two dozen kids, all huddling close together, moved down the road as hungry coyote eyes watched and tongues lolled, waiting for fresh meat.

Brianna had been down the road as far as the hills. When she saw kids coming toward Perdido Beach she knew Drake hadn’t passed that way.

Which meant he might have retreated toward the air national guard base. So she ran there and looked around. And found nothing.

Which left her baffled. Surely she would have seen him if he were close to the lake. Surely he hadn’t come along the road. And he wasn’t at the base or anywhere between those three points.

She was tired and frustrated. And worried about Sam yelling at her. Which just sent her off toward Coates, because she couldn’t come back empty-handed. She was the Breeze: she was the anti-Drake, at least in her own mind. And if he was out and about, running free, she was the one to find him and take him down.

But she hadn’t found him. She had found kids leaving Perdido Beach all babbling about the sky dying, and she’d found that rabbits were proliferating near Coates, and she’d found a dropped jar of Nutella on the line between the lake and the air base and had promptly eaten it.

But no Drake.

The sky was so weird. The light so wrong. That blank blackness all around, rising from the horizon to make a new, jagged horizon, it was all wrong.

And if it really did turn dark and stay dark? Then what? Then what for the Breeze? She would be stumbling around in the dark like everyone else. She would go from being important to being just another girl.

Sam wouldn’t even need her. He wouldn’t ask her to meetings. She wouldn’t be his go-to person. The mighty Brianna. Swift Girl. The most dangerous person in the FAYZ after Sam and Caine.

She had to get some altitude; that was it. Get the larger view while there was still a view to get.

She raced toward the Santa Katrina Hills. She blew right past two sets of footprints, registered them belatedly, then raced back to find them again.

They were quite clear. A pair of boots. And a pair of sneakers. Both leading from the hills in the general direction of Perdido Beach. Neither was big enough to be Drake. And he wouldn’t be heading that way.